In Norse mythology, Njord is often called the god of the sea, but he was associated with seafaring, sailing, and sea trade. He was not an embodiment of the sea itself. For this more primeval force, we look to the giants Aegir and Ran.
Aegir – Personification of the Sea
Aegir is described in the Orkneyinga Saga as one of the three elemental jotun or giants. He is the sea alongside Logi, fire, and Kari, wind. We meet Logi in the story of Thor visiting Utgard-Loki in Jotunheim. There, Loki participates in an eating contest with Logi. While Loki eats all his food, he still loses the competition because Logi also eats the wooden log that the food was sitting on, because fire consumes all.
Aegir and his brothers are the sons of the jotun Fornjot, who is euphemized as a legendary king of Finland and Kvenland. The Finns were not Vikings and lived a more nomadic lifestyle. They were seen as other and less socially organized than the Vikings. This may make them an appropriate parallel for the jotun, who were seen as forces of chaos in the universe, to which the Aesir gods brought order.
Aegir’s name means “of the water” in Old Norse. The same noun is used for the sea in Skaldic poetry. Aegir is also sometimes referred to by the name Hler, who was believed to live around Hler Island, which is modern Laeso. He is also sometimes called Gymir, though the meaning of the name is unclear. It could mean earthly from gumi, wintery from gemla, or engulfer from geyma.
Aegir – Divine Host & Brewer
Not unlike Loki, Aegir seems to have had cordial relations with the Aesir gods. In the Grimnismal, Odin suggests that Aegir is renowned for his hospitality.
In the Poetic Edda, Aegir hosts all the gods for a great dinner. For this feast, Aegir orders Thor to retrieve a special cauldron big enough to brew mead for everyone present. This leads Thor to visit the giant Hymir, where they go on a famous fishing trip together, and Thor almost pulls the monster Jormungandr out of the sea on his line. It is ambiguous whether it was Aegir’s intention that Thor come into contact with Jormungandr, who lives in the seas surrounding Midgard, and therefore the realm of Aegir.
Interesting, in a poem by Egil Skallagrimsson, he calls Aegir by the name Olmidr, which means “ale smith,” suggesting that there may be a connection between Aegir and the art of brewing.
When Aegir finally hosts his feast, it says that many gods and elves attended (the distinction between the two was not always clear) and that the hall was filled with gold that shimmered in the fire. The ale magically serves itself, though Aegir’s servers Fimafeng (hurrying service) and Eldir (fire stoker) were present.
This becomes the scene of the Lokasenna, with Loki arriving uninvited, but he was eventually allowed to stay because he reminded Odin of their pact to always drink together. He ends up insulting all of the gods, who make it clear that they have decided to punish him for his role in the death of Balder. When the gods praise the feast, Loki kills Fimafeng, and he is chased out before the gods return to keep drinking.
The Skaldskaparmal in the Prose Edda mentions a feast where Aegir goes the Asgard. He asks the bard god Bragi questions, and he responds with narratives about the gods. This is when he says that Aegir is also known as Hler and lives on Hler’s Island, and he is crafty in magic, and that he often visits Asgard, where he is well received.
Ran – Goddess of an Underwater Underworld
Aegir was partnered in the sea with the giantess Ran, who had great nets that she used to pull men down into the depths. Her name means “plundering” in Old Norse.
In the Poetic Edda, the Valkyrie Sigrun is described as protecting a hero by pulling him and his vessel out of the grip of Ran’s net. In the Fidsthjofs safa hins froekna, Fridthjofr and his men find themselves in a violent storm and mourn that they will soon be caught in Ran’s nets and dragged down to the bottom of the ocean, which is called Ran’s bed. They also suggest that this is where Ran’s hall is located. This has led to the suggestion that Ran oversaw an afterlife dedicated to those who died at sea. There were many afterlives in Norse mythology, and where you ended up was often linked to how you died.
Ran also seems to have been considered a witch, as one of the kennings for Ran was “Aegir’s volva.” Freyja was also considered a volva, as she was another goddess closely tied to nature, like Ran, though Freyja is clearly described as a Vanir goddess while Ran is a jotun.
The other main mention of Ran is in the Reginsmal, which says that after Loki killed Ottar, the son of the dwarf king Hreidmar, he must capture the dwarf Andvari, who has shapeshifted into a fish, so that he can take the treasure that he is protecting to pay the man price. For this purpose, he borrows Ran’s net. When he captures Andvari, Loki takes possession of the Andvaranaut, a ring made by the dwarf. The angry dwarf cursed the ring to bring misfortune to whoever possessed it. When Loki gave the ring to Hreidmar, it brought misfortune on him and his family. This story was one of the inspirations for Tolkien’s “One Ring.”
In a poem called Sonatorrek, attributed to the 10th century Icelandic poet Egill Skallagrimsson, the poet laments the death of his son by drowning and suggests that he would like to get revenge by cutting down Aegir, the personification of the sea, with his sword, and that he would fight both Aegir and Ran to get vengeance for his son.
Nine Daughters
Aegir and Ran reportedly had nine daughters, the nine waves, as one of the kennings for waves is the daughters of Aegir. There is a reference which suggests that the daughters were collectively the mothers of the god Heimdall with an unknown father, but potentially Odin.
It is interesting that there were nine sisters. Nine is a sacred number in Norse mythology. There were nine worlds in the Norse cosmos, Odin hung himself from Yggdrasil for nine days, and the ring dripper reproduced itself eight times every nine days. It also draws a parallel with the nine muses in Greek mythology. But the Norse sea daughters are probably more similar to the Nereids and Oceanids, the daughters of the primordial sea titans Nereus and Oceanus. There were 50 Nereids known to help sailors, while there are an undefined number of Oceanids.
Passing references in the Old Norse sources suggest that Aegir may also be the father of Snaeir, a personification of the snow, and perhaps also the beautiful giantess Gerdr, who would go on to marry Freyr, as her father was also named Gymir.
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